I am trying to complete a very simple task: email a document to someone.

"Dear colleague,

Please let me know the name of your contact for Project Xavier.I have the document ready to send, but your requisition form did not have the contact information filled in.I have checked your Projects Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler and Storm, but they do not have the contact number either.In addition, I have checked all emails related to these projects and the contact is not mentioned.

I have checked Moira's projects Magneto and Mystique, as she uses the same vendor, but she doesn't have the contact information either.As Project Xavier's head office has several hundred people, I will need a contact name. Then I can call and get the email address for your document.

Signed, White Dragon"

Colleague's response"

"Have you checked Project Xavier?"

Why yes, yes I have.

"Oh. How about Project Cyclops?"

Ummm. As Project Cyclops has only one document, no...the contact isn't there either.

"Oh."

A few seconds later, he cc'd me on an email asking someone for the information.

It's hard to convey why this is frustrating, except that I made a point of saying that I had looked for the info - and he told me to do what I just did (he didn't read the email through.)This colleague does this all the time - gives instructions that seem to make perfect sense - except that you can't actually do what you need to do because something, somewhere is garbled or missing.

It's like the Mobius Strip of Confusion. There is no end. Ever!

Logged

"I think her scattergun was only loaded with commas and full-stops, although some of them cuddled together for warmth and produced little baby colons and semi-colons." ~ Margo

Why don't you just send the document to him, and have him forward it to the contact himself?

I love the idea of giving it back to him to take care of it; however, I have the feeling that might blow up in White Dragon's face!

I would like to give him the document to send, but the whole purpose of my job is to have me (at $X to the client) spend the time doing the fiddly stuff like this instead of having him ($way more) do it.

That's one reason I make a point of telling him that I've turned over all the rocks before I go bug him with questions. It's just that sometimes his requests are less possible than others.

Logged

"I think her scattergun was only loaded with commas and full-stops, although some of them cuddled together for warmth and produced little baby colons and semi-colons." ~ Margo

I am having all I can do right now to not run into the back stacks and scream and scream and scream.

The patron is really a nice man but to say he is uneducated is being very kind.

He wants me to find a book about Christ. But not just a biography or an extrapolation. He wants a book WRITTEN by Jesus himself explaining what his parables mean. And, oh, if I can find the Ten Commandments as explained by Moses (and a biography of Moses written by one of his contemporaries while I am at it) that would be great.

Of course, everything I have pulled, including Bible for Dummies and "Don't KNow Much About the Bible" or "The Essential Teachings" have been what he is looking for because, frankly, he doesn't know what he is looking for. (He asked me about the pyramids in Washington D.C. and when he explained what he was talking about it turned out he was referring to Mount Rushmore.)

I appreciate anyone's efforts to educate themselves, but if you are NOT willing to put some thought into what you want and not willing to read what is given to you, then I am afraid I cannot help you.

I sent him downstairs to our children's room because he has asked for something "really really easy about Christ."

I think that was a good decision. The impossible requests are "Not Going To Happen 'Cause I'm Not Harry Potter" not because you are unwilling. Steering adults to juvenile works is often best. If I want an over view of a topic I don't need a 700 page definitive tome. A good work written for youth fits my need.

OT: It reminds me of when I was assigned to assist Dr. Oswald C. J. Hoffmann (of The Lutheran Hour radio show) during a visit to our military chapel. He used a Greek New Testament. After one presentation he was taken to task for not using the KJV, "Just like Jesus did."

He was a much kinder person than I would have been. After one futile attempt of explaining why the idea was historically inaccurate, he just smiled and said "I'll pray about it."

I have a student whose parent decided to add him to a class of mine to learn to read. He'd been going to some other place for just over a year now and couldn't read a word (the other place is notorious for doing lots of "preparing for reading" activities and not any actual reading), but after one lesson with us, he could read simple words and a few sight words. His mother was thrilled.

But. There is a problem. She's too busy to take him to the class at the normal time, so do we have any other class times?

Me: "We have many classes, yes. Let me get you a time table so you can choose the one you think will work best."Her: "No, just tell me. I can't bring him on weekdays because I'm too busy."Me: "Well, okay, we have lots of lessons over the weekend, so-"Her: "I'm not bringing him in over the weekend! That's his only time to relax from all his other tutoring he has to do during the week!" (he does an art class, swimming, etc.)Me: "I'm not sure I understand. You can't bring him on weekdays, but you don't want to bring him on weekends?"Her: "Yes. Do you have any classes for that?"

I was dumbfounded. So I kind of gave her the pamphlet with a timetable on it anyway. I hope she finds the mythical day which is neither a weekday nor a weekend. I'd love to know when that is. She was perfectly polite and everything, and I'm chalking it up to her having had a long day and being kind of out of it. I hope that's what it was, anyway.

This isn't an impossible patron request, just an impossible to believe patron, but I'm going to put it here anyway because I'm lazy.

So, it's Banned Books Week here in America. Many libraries have displays put up to inform the public and possibly stimulate thought and discussion on the issue. There are many challenges of library materials all over the country every year, ranging from some perfectly reasonable cases like "I believe this book should be in the adult collection rather than the juvenile," to other cases that boil down to "I don't like this book, so no one should be allowed to read it ever, and I'm suing you for tens of thousands of dollars in damages from just seeing the book and demanding that you publicly destroy it and asking the town council to declare displaying it to be a hate crime." (Baby Be Bop by Francesca Lia Block, for those interested.)

I put together a display for my library. I've got some books in there that probably won't surprise anyone - 50 Shades of Grey, Catcher In The Rye, Huck Finn, Harry Potter - and some that generally get a laugh or outright disbelief, such as the Bible, various picture books and Junie B Jones. All of the books I included have been challenged, banned or otherwise attacked here in the US relatively recently. Harry Potter, a non-King James Bible and the movie Coneheads were all burned by some nuts in either Michigan or Minnesota about ten years back, for example. I really wish I knew why they decided to burn Coneheads. It's far from a good movie, but also far from Dan Ackroyd's worst. If anyone wants to burn Caddyshack II, I'll provide the matches.

Anyway. Banned books display, all items with a short or long description of how and when they've been challenged. Including Junie B Jones, which gets a lot of reactions from the younger kids who are its target audience. Some parents explain the issue to their kids, some just gloss over it, but this one today sort of takes the cake.

A co-worker told me about it. A little girl asked her mom why Junie B Jones was banned, and her mom explained to her that when books are bad libraries ban them so no one has to read the bad books. You don't want to read books that are bad for you, do you, sweetie? The library takes care of things so you never will!

As God is my witness, I never thought that when I put up the Banned Books Week sign I'd need to include a second banner proclaiming, "For the record, we're against it."

This isn't an impossible patron request, just an impossible to believe patron, but I'm going to put it here anyway because I'm lazy.

So, it's Banned Books Week here in America. Many libraries have displays put up to inform the public and possibly stimulate thought and discussion on the issue. There are many challenges of library materials all over the country every year, ranging from some perfectly reasonable cases like "I believe this book should be in the adult collection rather than the juvenile," to other cases that boil down to "I don't like this book, so no one should be allowed to read it ever, and I'm suing you for tens of thousands of dollars in damages from just seeing the book and demanding that you publicly destroy it and asking the town council to declare displaying it to be a hate crime." (Baby Be Bop by Francesca Lia Block, for those interested.)

I put together a display for my library. I've got some books in there that probably won't surprise anyone - 50 Shades of Grey, Catcher In The Rye, Huck Finn, Harry Potter - and some that generally get a laugh or outright disbelief, such as the Bible, various picture books and Junie B Jones. All of the books I included have been challenged, banned or otherwise attacked here in the US relatively recently. Harry Potter, a non-King James Bible and the movie Coneheads were all burned by some nuts in either Michigan or Minnesota about ten years back, for example. I really wish I knew why they decided to burn Coneheads. It's far from a good movie, but also far from Dan Ackroyd's worst. If anyone wants to burn Caddyshack II, I'll provide the matches.

Anyway. Banned books display, all items with a short or long description of how and when they've been challenged. Including Junie B Jones, which gets a lot of reactions from the younger kids who are its target audience. Some parents explain the issue to their kids, some just gloss over it, but this one today sort of takes the cake.

A co-worker told me about it. A little girl asked her mom why Junie B Jones was banned, and her mom explained to her that when books are bad libraries ban them so no one has to read the bad books. You don't want to read books that are bad for you, do you, sweetie? The library takes care of things so you never will!

As God is my witness, I never thought that when I put up the Banned Books Week sign I'd need to include a second banner proclaiming, "For the record, we're against it."

I know why my Sister hates Junie B Jones (the way she speaks in non-standard English makes it hard for a dyslexic Mom to help her dyslexic child read) - but what was the reason given for trying t bann it.

A co-worker told me about it. A little girl asked her mom why Junie B Jones was banned, and her mom explained to her that when books are bad libraries ban them so no one has to read the bad books. You don't want to read books that are bad for you, do you, sweetie? The library takes care of things so you never will!

As God is my witness, I never thought that when I put up the Banned Books Week sign I'd need to include a second banner proclaiming, "For the record, we're against it."

My library had to put up multiple signs saying "You can check out banned books! All books at the library are available to check out." Also lots of pamphlets explaining the concept. My daughter picked out...wait for it...Captain Underpants. The librarian suggested "Wizard of Oz," banned due to having a strong heroine when girls don't need inner strength, and elsewhere for generally being a waste of time; but DD said we'd already read it and she'd like to try something new. Boy howdy, Captain Underpants is something new, all right.

Logged

“A real desire to believe all the good you can of others and to make others as comfortable as you can will solve most of the problems.” CS Lewis

This isn't an impossible patron request, just an impossible to believe patron, but I'm going to put it here anyway because I'm lazy.

So, it's Banned Books Week here in America. Many libraries have displays put up to inform the public and possibly stimulate thought and discussion on the issue. There are many challenges of library materials all over the country every year, ranging from some perfectly reasonable cases like "I believe this book should be in the adult collection rather than the juvenile," to other cases that boil down to "I don't like this book, so no one should be allowed to read it ever, and I'm suing you for tens of thousands of dollars in damages from just seeing the book and demanding that you publicly destroy it and asking the town council to declare displaying it to be a hate crime." (Baby Be Bop by Francesca Lia Block, for those interested.)

I put together a display for my library. I've got some books in there that probably won't surprise anyone - 50 Shades of Grey, Catcher In The Rye, Huck Finn, Harry Potter - and some that generally get a laugh or outright disbelief, such as the Bible, various picture books and Junie B Jones. All of the books I included have been challenged, banned or otherwise attacked here in the US relatively recently. Harry Potter, a non-King James Bible and the movie Coneheads were all burned by some nuts in either Michigan or Minnesota about ten years back, for example. I really wish I knew why they decided to burn Coneheads. It's far from a good movie, but also far from Dan Ackroyd's worst. If anyone wants to burn Caddyshack II, I'll provide the matches.

Anyway. Banned books display, all items with a short or long description of how and when they've been challenged. Including Junie B Jones, which gets a lot of reactions from the younger kids who are its target audience. Some parents explain the issue to their kids, some just gloss over it, but this one today sort of takes the cake.

A co-worker told me about it. A little girl asked her mom why Junie B Jones was banned, and her mom explained to her that when books are bad libraries ban them so no one has to read the bad books. You don't want to read books that are bad for you, do you, sweetie? The library takes care of things so you never will!

As God is my witness, I never thought that when I put up the Banned Books Week sign I'd need to include a second banner proclaiming, "For the record, we're against it."

I know why my Sister hates Junie B Jones (the way she speaks in non-standard English makes it hard for a dyslexic Mom to help her dyslexic child read) - but what was the reason given for trying t bann it.

I just looked it up because I never heard of the book and that is why. "Reasons cited are poor social values taught by the books and Junie B. Jones not being considered a good role model due to her mouthiness and bad spelling/grammar.[6]"

Yeah, we don't like Junie around here for that reason. I was amused by reading about her as an adult, but once I had kids... yeah, not a role model I want them to emulate.

Doing banned books week at my library used to drive me batty. Almost every book on the list we were supposed to use would be "banned" because there was ONE request to move it to the adult section instead of YA, or somebody had suggested that a middle school library wasn't the right place for the book, or because ONE person had complained about. People, that's not "banned." No idea who put together the list that we were supposed to go by, I don't remember where we got it, but whoever did it must have been working in a library where the dictionary had been banned as well. I think the power of telling people about banned books is weakened when we start including books that were never actually banned, just complained about.

Reminded me of the list that students would come in with, made by some teacher, of "black inventors," which was missing actual *real* black inventors like George Washington Carver, and instead included a bunch of people who had maybe patented an upgrade to an item but never *invented* anything, so there were no books available (one woman was credited with inventing the comb. In 1850. Because nobody had combs before that?). But students were required to do a report on somebody on this list and weren't allowed to deviate and use an actual black inventor. We usually cleared out of books on Gareth Morgan the first day and then we were stuck. Library assignments that I do not miss!

Logged

Emily is 9 years old! 1/07Jenny is 7 years old! 10/08Charlotte is 5 years old! 8/10Megan is 3 years old! 10/12Lydia is 1 year old! 12/14

Mommy Penguin, I feel your pain! We used to carry patents and we were able to pull out the patents for these "upgrades" of which you speak. I tried like crazy to explain to students that the only reason we know these people were black was because race was something that was checked back then for patents and isn't anymore. (Witness the fact that all these "famous" inventors created the brush, the comb, the coat hanger years ago and not in the last thirty or forty years). We wrote "Dear Dummy" letters to the teachers explaining that there were no books or articles with which a student could write a fifteen page report.

Naturally, we were, well, the R word for not being able to come up with several hefty tomes and journal articles on the life of each person.

This isn't an impossible patron request, just an impossible to believe patron, but I'm going to put it here anyway because I'm lazy.

So, it's Banned Books Week here in America. Many libraries have displays put up to inform the public and possibly stimulate thought and discussion on the issue. There are many challenges of library materials all over the country every year, ranging from some perfectly reasonable cases like "I believe this book should be in the adult collection rather than the juvenile," to other cases that boil down to "I don't like this book, so no one should be allowed to read it ever, and I'm suing you for tens of thousands of dollars in damages from just seeing the book and demanding that you publicly destroy it and asking the town council to declare displaying it to be a hate crime." (Baby Be Bop by Francesca Lia Block, for those interested.)

I put together a display for my library. I've got some books in there that probably won't surprise anyone - 50 Shades of Grey, Catcher In The Rye, Huck Finn, Harry Potter - and some that generally get a laugh or outright disbelief, such as the Bible, various picture books and Junie B Jones. All of the books I included have been challenged, banned or otherwise attacked here in the US relatively recently. Harry Potter, a non-King James Bible and the movie Coneheads were all burned by some nuts in either Michigan or Minnesota about ten years back, for example. I really wish I knew why they decided to burn Coneheads. It's far from a good movie, but also far from Dan Ackroyd's worst. If anyone wants to burn Caddyshack II, I'll provide the matches.

Anyway. Banned books display, all items with a short or long description of how and when they've been challenged. Including Junie B Jones, which gets a lot of reactions from the younger kids who are its target audience. Some parents explain the issue to their kids, some just gloss over it, but this one today sort of takes the cake.

A co-worker told me about it. A little girl asked her mom why Junie B Jones was banned, and her mom explained to her that when books are bad libraries ban them so no one has to read the bad books. You don't want to read books that are bad for you, do you, sweetie? The library takes care of things so you never will!

As God is my witness, I never thought that when I put up the Banned Books Week sign I'd need to include a second banner proclaiming, "For the record, we're against it."

I know why my Sister hates Junie B Jones (the way she speaks in non-standard English makes it hard for a dyslexic Mom to help her dyslexic child read) - but what was the reason given for trying t bann it.

I just looked it up because I never heard of the book and that is why. "Reasons cited are poor social values taught by the books and Junie B. Jones not being considered a good role model due to her mouthiness and bad spelling/grammar.[6]"

The grammar is bad, but can be very accurate for the age group they were written.

My oldest daughter liked them very much, we read them together when she was in preschool. When she started Kindergarten, my daughter came home the first week every day announcing that she hadn't been sent to the Principal's office yet. Then she came home one day and announced that she had been sent to the Principal's office, just like Junie B! It was part of a scavenger hunt to help them learn where everything was in the school, like the library, and included being sent to find the Principal's office where he gave every child a sticker. They were actually using rhymes from the story about the Little Gingerbread Man to send them to places.